The German mobile bank N26 announced that they are expanding into the USA. This announcement comes almost exactly one month after revolut, their biggest competitor, launched its operations in Austria and Germany (I wrote about revolut in revolut, N26, and the future of banking). Also, this announcement comes only a few days after revolut’s announcement of the cooperation with the InsurTech startup simplesurance. simplesurance — a test case for simplesurance and the industry This partnership is interesting due to several reasons. Specifically, in regards to simplesurance, it is interesting because their simplesurance’s solution for revolut does not stem from their standard offering. simplesurance, the Berlin-based FinTech, has three offerings: B2C products such as simplesurance.co.uk through which they offer insurance for consumer electronics, insurance cross-selling for e-commerce, and an insurance broker. I guess that this is a test case for them and — if successful — going to integrate that as a standard offering. As it is concept-wise similar to their cross-selling solution, it makes sense to incorporate that into their offering from a portfolio perspective. From an industry-perspective — and this is another interesting aspect of this cooperation — it makes sense as well because it points at the convergence of

BuddyGuard, the Berlin-based smart home startup, raised €3.4 Million from Bachmann Group for their AI-empowered security camera called FLARE. BuddyGuard’s FLARE: AI-enhanced security camera with service add-ons BuddyGuard’s FLARE is an independently acting camera, equipped with, amongst others, a battery, Wi-Fi, cellular, motion sensors and a microphone. Using these features and the built-in AI-capabilities, FLARE detects conspicuous movements or noises and alerts first responders if necessary. The AI distinguishes between you (including your pets) and unknown people and acts accordingly. You can further enhance the FLARE’s capabilities by subscribing to one of BuddyGuard’s add-ons. These add-ons are BuddySIM (for when Wi-Fi is unavailable), BuddyReact (for automatic contacting the police and a live-stream to BuddyGuard’s monitoring center), BuddyCall (call and text alert in the case of unexpected activities), and BuddyCloud (cloud for the video material). The FLARE itself costs €449 and BuddyGuard markets it as products for B2C and B2B. BuddyGuard’s FLARE (Source) FLARE’s difficult positioning in a crowded market due to high price and low brand recognition FLARE’s main difference compared to alternatives is their AI. Other cameras have similar functionality. For instance, several are equipped with motion detection, animal- or voice detection. However, as none of them comes with AI technology,

BuddyGuard, the Berlin-based smart home startup, raised €3.4 Million from Bachmann Group for their AI-empowered security camera called FLARE. BuddyGuard’s FLARE: AI-enhanced security camera with service add-ons BuddyGuard’s FLARE is an independently acting camera, equipped with, amongst others, a battery, Wi-Fi, cellular, motion sensors and a microphone. Using these features and the built-in AI-capabilities, FLARE detects conspicuous movements or noises and alerts first responders if necessary. The AI distinguishes between you (including your pets) and unknown people and acts accordingly. You can further enhance the FLARE’s capabilities by subscribing to one of BuddyGuard’s add-ons. These add-ons are BuddySIM (for when Wi-Fi is unavailable), BuddyReact (for automatic contacting the police and a live-stream to BuddyGuard’s monitoring center), BuddyCall (call and text alert in the case of unexpected activities), and BuddyCloud (cloud for the video material). The FLARE itself costs €449 and BuddyGuard markets it as products for B2C and B2B. BuddyGuard’s FLARE (Source) FLARE’s difficult positioning in a crowded market due to high price and low brand recognition FLARE’s main difference compared to alternatives is their AI. Other cameras have similar functionality. For instance, several are equipped with motion detection, animal- or voice detection. However, as none of them comes with AI technology,

In the last couple of days four ICOs have been announced in the DACH-area: HEROCoin by byte heroes (Austria’s first ICO) H2O by HydroMiner wys by Wysker (Germany’s first ICO) CTD by Cointed Here I will cover HEROCoin, H2O, and wys. As Cointed was accused of fraud, it deserves a more detailed look and I will do so separately. ICOs in general, are a fascinating topic and I am equally excited that we have them now in Austria and Germany as well. In this post, I am going to focus on the white papers and only briefly touch upon the startups itself. Due to lacking regulations, there are no binding guidelines regarding what such a white paper should contain or a company-specific coin should be. However, what struck me was How little information about the current state the white papers provide: finances, competition, and market overview, for instance, are sparsely elaborated How little information about the future they present: wysker is the only company to provide measurable metrics for assessing progress (and these metrics are not the most useful ones) The lack of an economic model for the coins: I believe that the issued coin should be tied to the

In the last couple of days at least three German startups have made it into the news: parce pitched on Die Höhle der Löwen Pariot started their Kickstarter campaign Porsche invested in home-iX Parce During the Die Höhle der Löwen (DHDL) parce pitched their smart socket Parce Plus. It costs €49.90 and devices connected to it can be controlled through an app or Siri. They also have two smart light switches announced to ship March 2018 in the portfolio.parce’s products from left to right: light switch Parce M1, light switch Parce L1, and socket Parce Plus (Sources: Parce M1, Parce L1, Parce Plus) The socket, which was the focus of the pitch, has pretty standard features; integration into HomeKit (no Android support, however), an accompanying app and power consumption logging. According to the TV pitch, their main differentiator is „Made in Germany“ and WLAN as the connection technology. However, on Indiegogo, where they raised money for their first socket Parce, they advertised more functions which centre around analytics. The Parce turns off devices based on usage or schedules, has price comparison for electricity included and recommends you ways how you can save money. But according to their website these features are

Google introduced a range of new products during its hardware event including a set of wireless headphones called the Pixel Buds. Google Hardware event; presentation of Pixel Buds start at 1:23 Amongst other features, Pixel Buds support real-time voice translation through Google Translate. The earphones, however, do not do the actual translation work: Google told us that the earbuds are connected via Bluetooth to the smartphone, and that the smartphone microphone picks up the spoken words. It sends them over the cloud to Google’s data centers, where Google Translate produces a translation. It sends back the translated words in the form of speech to the phone, which transfers them back to the earbuds. — VentureBeat Thus, they are more about seamless user experience than technology (click the Bud and start talking vs. talking out your phone, opening the app and then talking). The announcement of wireless headphones should not come as a surprise. A Google patent from earlier this year showed that they might be working on something like that. Also, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and Apple have similar products as well. Speaking of Apple, Apple’s AirPods are what comes immediately to mind when hearing about the Pixel Buds. And the

revolut, the app-based bank from Britain, started their operations in Germany and Austria on September 27. From their profile on SEEDRS Revolut is targeting consumers and businesses that are dissatisfied with their banks and other financial services for three main reasons: (i) lack of product innovation (ii) the expense of spending money abroad and (iii) fees to transfer money overseas. — SEEDRS The narrative is clear (this is important as I will show later on) and is well summarized in revolut’s claim: “ Revolut — The only account for your global lifestyle”. Concretely this means that you get fee-free purchase and withdrawals for 120 currencies, free money transfers of up to £5,000 per month and you can keep up to 26 currencies in the app which you can exchange without fees. Furthermore, they focus on user-friendliness through insightful spending overview (financial forecasting is planned), immediate balance update, splitting-bills between revolut-users, P2P credits, in-app credit card (un)blocking, instant money transfers and an in-app customer support chat bot. In terms of products you can either use a real or virtual credit card and they also offer an insurance for smartphones. In addition to free services, they have a premium version (6,99€/month) though which you

The Austrian-based start-up Timeular went on Die Höhle der Löwen (DHDL) with their hardware-based time tracking tool ZEIº. The ZEIº is an eight-sided polygon where each side represents a task you are working on. You switch between these tasks by switching the polygon, and the upwards-facing side is the tasks being tracked right now. Three Z by Timeular (Source) I wrote about ZEIº a while back (post in German) and concluded that the product creates „pain“ for users: because they have to (re-)design each side multiple times due to ZEIº’s limited flexibility: it has only eight sites, and you cannot add spontaneous tasks people can steal it it is only useful for stationary work The jury from DHDL additionally mentioned that people simply won’t use ZEIº because finding the right side for the corresponding task is difficult, they will simply forget to track and that using a time tracking device is simply annoying. Furthermore, they criticized that a hardware-based solution is not future-proof and that an (AI-)software is the way to go. ZEIº only better significantly better for a few people The first part of the criticism shows that customer education is needed. There are a lot of people who do not

volders, a Berlin-based contract management startup raised two million euros. The company describes itself as a personal contract assistant. You feed the application with your contracts and it manages them for you. You are alerted about contract expiration, you can cancel or prolong contracts and in combination with a built-in price comparison tool you can compare and sign up for new contracts. Overview of your contracts in volders (Source) In essence, volders wants you to do the following things in a repetitive circle: Upload all your contracts Receive notifications about contract expiration Cancel contracts Compare and switch contracts volders started as vertragslotse.com in 2014 and received a six-figure investment in 2015. Also in 2015, Vertragslotse.com was renamed into volders. (It seems to me that the major reason for the name change was internalization.) Finally, In 2016 they launched an iOS-App (pretty late) (volders’ history) With their latest investment they want to position themselves as your „personal digital contract assistant“. Furthermore, they want to make “their customer service more proactive and tailor the comparison and prolongation offers more towards their customers“. This year they increased their user base by 50 percent to 550.000 (from Gründerszene). Their plan (more proactive customer service and

volders, a Berlin-based contract management startup raised two million euros. The company describes itself as a personal contract assistant. You feed the application with your contracts and it manages them for you. You are alerted about contract expiration, you can cancel or prolong contracts and in combination with a built-in price comparison tool you can compare and sign up for new contracts. Overview of your contracts in volders (Source) In essence, volders wants you to do the following things in a repetitive circle: Upload all your contracts Receive notifications about contract expiration Cancel contracts Compare and switch contracts volders started as vertragslotse.com in 2014 and received a six-figure investment in 2015. Also in 2015, Vertragslotse.com was renamed into volders. (It seems to me that the major reason for the name change was internalization.) Finally, In 2016 they launched an iOS-App (pretty late) (volders’ history) With their latest investment they want to position themselves as your „personal digital contract assistant“. Furthermore, they want to make “their customer service more proactive and tailor the comparison and prolongation offers more towards their customers“. This year they increased their user base by 50 percent to 550.000 (from Gründerszene). Their plan (more proactive customer service and